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ERICSSON

Chinese firm beats Ericsson to 4G deal

Ericsson's Chinese competitor Huawei has made deep inroads into the Swedish company's home turf after securing a deal to deliver a major 4G network in Sweden.

Telecom operators Telenor and Tele2’s joint venture Net4mobility has selected Huawei to roll out its new high speed network. Both Tele2 and Telenor said they were won over by Huawei’s competitive prices.

“It has been a long procurement process in which we discussed both technology and price before settling on Huawei,” Tele 2 Sweden CEO Niclas Palmstierna told the TT news agency.

“All actors in this process are strong on technology and have comparable offers. But we opted for Huawei because they met with all of our important parameters,” he added.

Net4mobility aims for its high speed 4G mobile network to be available to 99 percent of the population by 2013, with work on the project set to start next year in the major Swedish cities.

Ericsson said it regretted the decision not going its way.

“We went as low as we possibly could in price during the negotiations but it wasn’t enough,” said Mikael Bäckström, head of Ericsson in the Nordic and Baltic regions, in a statement.

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SWEDEN AND UKRAINE

Ericsson suspends all Russia operations indefinitely

Swedish network equipment maker Ericsson said Monday that it was suspending all of its Russian operations over the war in Ukraine for the foreseeable future.

Ericsson suspends all Russia operations indefinitely

The telecom giant already announced in late February that it would stop all deliveries to Russia following Moscow’s February 24 invasion of Ukraine.

“In the light of recent events and of European Union sanctions, the company will now suspend its affected business with customers in Russia indefinitely,” Ericsson said in a statement.

The company added that it was “engaging with customers and partners regarding the indefinite suspension of the affected business.”

“The priority is to focus on the safety and well-being of Ericsson employees in Russia and they will be placed on paid leave,” it said.

READ ALSO: How has Sweden responded to Putin’s war in Ukraine so far?

Hundreds of Western firms ranging from Ikea to Coca-Cola, Goldman Sachs and McDonald’s have stopped operations in the country since the invasion, with French banking group Societe Generale announcing Monday it was selling its stake in Russia’s Rosbank.

Ericsson has around 600 employees in Russia, and is a “major supplier to the largest operator MTS and the fourth largest operator Tele2,” a company spokeswoman told AFP, adding that together with Ukraine, Russia accounts for less than two percent of revenue.

As a result, the equipment maker said it would record a provision for 900 million Swedish kronor ($95 million, 87 million euros) for the first quarter of 2022 for “impairment of assets and other exceptional costs,” though no staff redundancy costs were included.
Ericsson is due to publish its first quarter earnings on April 14.

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